collaboration/editing/live essayistic mixing
the swiss psychotropic gold refining –
a molecular listening session by nina bandi & anna frei
gold, quantum physics and sweeping the batea
live-listening performance within the exhibition «the swiss psychotropic gold refining» by knowbotiq
10.09.2017, corner college, zürich
texts by: nina bandi
mixing & editing: anna frei/fred hystère
voices: sally schonfeldt, emre sarigöl
with quotes by karen barad, gloria wekker, michael taussig and many others
For more than three hundred years, Swiss commodity trading has been part of a mesh of colonial, postcolonial and neoliberal entanglements. It enabled both early modern industrialization and the constitution of the Switzerland as a financial center. It also brought about specific aesthetic, affective and moral economies. The Swiss myth of neutrality turns dirty materialities and trades in commodities into an opaque and discrete form of technocracy, security, philanthropy and white supremacy.The Swiss Psychotropic Gold Refining fabulates on commodity trading and refining of gold. Narratives of violence, the access on black bodies, derivative enrichments, psychotropic energies and mutual indebtness molecularise on the high-gloss, tenderly protective metal. Calvinist gold is never shown. It goes through repeated cycles of purification/refinement, processing and remelting – making it suitable for any form of erasing traces and anonymising, as well as the healing of post-/colonial amnesia.
the swiss psychotropic gold refining – a molecular listening session by nina bandi & anna frei – live recording